I just wanted to say that I freaking love emulators.

[KAZ]

I've currently been messing around with Mess (I intended to use that word not as a pun).

 

I've been tooling around with Apple 2 (shh, don't tell anyone I hate macs).

 

Some of those games made in the 80's were just so incredibly fun. Karateka for one, and I just got through playing "Drol". My brother who was 5 years older than me had a friend who used to fork out bunches of Apple 2 diskettes to him. Of course considering I was born in 1975, it would make me like 7 or 8 years old around the time of Apple 2 (actually GS).

 

Which I was completely enthralled with these diskettes that my brother got from his friend, so I just got a kick out of trying to get them all working, with arcane commands like Brun this, and CATALOG that. Syntax Error was my constant companion, ahh.

 

But anyway, I fired up Mess verion 86 to "play apple". Mess has come a long way for Apple compatibility.

 

Well I was playing Kangaroo on the Atari 5200, and the point is that the Kangaroo began to drift to the left, so that I had to constantly hold the button to the right. Now at first a person might be like, oh cripes it doesn't work!! But to me, this is so awesome, it indicates the directness of the emulation, where it would do that on a real 5200 all the time. Sometimes the analog would "correct" itself mysteriously, likewise on the emulator it did the same thing. Eventually, it is like it calibrated itself, and started behaving right like the real thing.

 

The coolness of that is more for that words can describe.

 

And by the way, my apartment would not easily accommodate a HUGE Apple 2 computer, so an emulator is THE only way I can play the games on it. Thanks emulator maker guys for making them so exact.

 

Andrew

 

 

 

***CRACKED BY JUJU KING*** (I always read things like this on the games) haha

 

which, I wonder, does that mean that in the days of Apple, people used to take retail games (like of Karateka) and figure out how to make copies of them? It just dawned on me the meaning of that.

[NE146]

Mess has come a long way for Apple compatibility.

 

Hello... Why are you using Mess? Use APPLEWIN!

 

Applewins been turning my pc's into virtual Apple 2e's for years Click the disk drive, insert an image, press the apple to boot and voila! Click on the full screen button for full screen of course. And I personally like to change the colors in the options menu to be pure monochrome GREEN. (Just the way I like it.)

 

Having said that.. I'll have to check out mess and see how it does as well

[KAZ]

Yeah, I've used Apple Win also. It is great.

 

It is nice to have all the emulators in one place, that's all.

 

So while Stella might be better than Mess for 2600 also, it is nice to have it on Mess. Except of course if there is a certain game that'll only work on one or the other, probably Stella.

 

Likewise, I'll have to see what games don't play on Apple 2 Mess. I haven't fired up an apple 2 emulator in quite some time.

 

Well I better go, gotta get in a game of beat em, eat em before bed

or maybe a nice game of Custerd's Revenge would be swell too.

 

Andrew

[Ze_ro]

***CRACKED BY JUJU KING*** (I always read things like this on the games) haha

 

which, I wonder, does that mean that in the days of Apple, people used to take retail games (like of Karateka) and figure out how to make copies of them?  It just dawned on me the meaning of that.

Yep, that's exactly right. The C64 scene had a lot of this too. Usually, the disks had strange methods of copy protection (like intentional errors on the disk that the program would look for). Instead of trying to recreate the error (which was mostly impossible), they'd just hack the code to remove the check entirely. I remember my brother did this for a few games, specifically the Gold Box AD&D games. These games would ask for a specific word out of the manual, or use a code wheel... he'd just edit the code so that no matter what you entered, it would think it was correct.

 

Back in the days, these hackers formed whole teams like Fairlight (who are still around, in fact)... usually going as far as to include whole "crack intros" for the game like you've seen. Some of these crack intros are surprisingly complicated and well done, with swirling text and everything. Unfortunately, cracking a game often involved removing whatever fast loading routines were in place. This really hurt games like California Games and other Epyx games, which were actually quite swift, but took ages to load from the cracked versions.

 

My favorite crack team has to be Remember, and specifically Jack Alien. These guys have cracked a good number of C64 games (and are still working on more). They even go as far as to fix bugs in the games, add high score saving, include the documentation on the disk (which will display when you try to load the game), add trainers, and whatever else they seem to feel like putting in there. Very impressive stuff.

 

--Zero

[Nukey Shay]

Yup...and then management turned their heads and started blaming Atari for all piracy! I mean the hacking scene was MUCH larger in the C64 (or Apple) crowd. Some developers ignored that as office politics...but unfortunately, some developers started agreeing with it...and Atari started getting less and less 3rd parties willing to work with the machine.

 

Now if we could just convince RIAA that the distribution of MP3's does not hurt sales of CD's...if anything, it helps it (i.e. people buying something by a group that they normally would have never heard about).

[KAZ]

Ok, I gotta ask this, since I have nowhere else to ask it.

 

Beyond Castle Wolfenstein is one of the most pleasant games to play ever. I'm not talking graphics or horrendous sound effects, but the fact that it is humorous to play, and is so addictive.

 

It brings out "the little mean monster" in me or something.

 

It is just totally fun to have some guard say: STOP COME HERE (in this really funny extremely distorted sound), then he asks for a pass. If you can pick the right one, he'll go "HEIL", if you don't he'll ask again. If you pick a wrong pass again, he'll capture you, so I figured out (without the help of any manual ever) that I pressed M which I thought meant Money, but it means "mark", which I guess that's what they call currency in Germany.

 

But then the guard turns around, and it is fun to shoot them in the back, and then hear this gutteral sound of them dying. I mean they are nazis after all (just kidding), I just think it is humorous fun.

 

I like just pulling gun on the guards, and listen to them scream, and then you can sometimes shoot them before they shoot back.

 

Ok, to the point:

 

Does anyone know of a cheat code for this game (like invulnerability or something), so I can finally see the "end" of the game. I've seen the part with "Hitler" marching around a table, and them all going "Heil". And I've even had the bomb in my possesion, which I've even placed it near the "entrance" to this "meeting". And then the alarms go off, and I've never actually made it out alive, wherever you need to go, which I assume you need to return to the original bunker or something.

 

So help me close the chapter to this game. Getting a cheat for Conan would be quite neat too, since I haven't seen all of the levels.

 

Or perhaps I can "hack" the game itself, to change the binary code or something. But I don't know how.

 

"STAUPCOMEWIFFME" (Stop, come with me)

 

"OWIZPASS" "OWIZPASS" (Show your pass)

 

"HEIL" (dam nazis)

 

I'm just doing a rendition of the sound effects, just so funny!

 

Oh yeah, shooting at the door that is locked is quite entertaining too. Boom!

[1eyedjack]

i have been running emulators for years. my atari ST ran IBM DOS software, as well as Mac. IBM stuff ran slow if there were graphics, but Messy Dos ran fine, along with programs of the day, like PCFile and ProComm.

 

As far as the Mac software, the ST ran it FASTER than a MAC a a QQUARTER of the price!!!!! It was awesome pissing off a lot of mac enthusiests back then. Even MacWorld picked the STacy laptop over the Apple Mac Laptop for the power and the price!!!!!!

 

I have been with mame since it was the Multi-Pac emulator. I am glad that we can run almost any system from the past almost flawlessly. 20 years ago, if you told me, I could have an Apple 2, mac, atari 8-bit, 2600, 5200, ST, Odysee 2, Vectrex, Colecovision, Intelivision, Amiga, C-64 and over 5000 arcade games to be abple to all fit in a car, and play as you were riding down the highway, i would have said you were nuts. Now it is a realitty.

 

1ej

[Ze_ro]

As far as the Mac software, the ST ran it FASTER than a MAC a a QQUARTER of the price!!!!!

The Amiga could do this too (after all, the Amiga and the ST are basically the same anyways)... we used to joke about the best Mac being an Amiga.

 

--Zero